Voyager Golden Record - Materials

Materials

The record is constructed of gold-plated copper. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.51 billion years. It is possible that a civilization that encounters the record will be able to use the ratio of remaining uranium to daughter elements to determine the age of the record.

The records also had the sentence "To the makers of music — all worlds, all times" handwritten on them. Since this was not in the original disc specification, it almost caused their rejection.

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